Based on the award-winning novel, Altered Carbon takes place in a future where the human mind can now be digitized and downloaded into a "cortical stack" and placed into new bodies, called sleeves.

The series follows Envoy soldier Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman), who is brought back to life centuries later to investigate the attempted murder of Laurens Bancroft (James Purefoy), the wealthiest man on Earth. As the investigation progresses, Kovacs comes to learn that his past isn’t nearly as buried as he thought.

Yeah, massive excitement over here. Interestingly, some of the hints in the interviews suggest that they've changed some of the smaller details, but the big picture seems to remain exactly the same and the big worry for some fans (we require multiple Kovacs) has been confirmed on IMDB for over a year.

The big change to Kovacs' background worried me but a lot of reviews say it works and it was kind of necessary because in the books we get his background through his thoughts, which you can't really do well on screen.

On the other hand, the reviews have been kind of mixed so far, so we'll see.

Only watched two episodes thus far, trying to pace it out, but I think it's just off the scale fantastic. It's one of those rare shows where everything is so exciting scene to scene that it's hard to find a moment to pause the stream to take a pee break.

I should get back to nature, too. You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer. Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached. Buy a car with only two cup holders or something.

It's a live action of a cyberpunkish sci-fi anime, which means that if you stop to think for 5 seconds about it as sci-fi, it all falls apart. But between Rule of Cool and some really tight plotting, you don't get many chances to pick at it.

I'm about 2 episodes in and I don't care for it. It's an interesting concept, I just think two of the main actors (the protagonist Kovacs and the lady cop) are really horrible and make the show hard to watch.

Wow, just goes to show that people's impressions can be wildly different. I loved Joel Kinnaman in the Killing and I'm loving him here. I also am enjoying the cop and the integration of her latin family into the story with the conceit that language barriers are eliminated through some sort of learning software implant and all that's left is different cultures without a linguistic divide.

As to the impression that it's based on an Anime, I can't really find fault with that impression, since some of the scenes look like straight up Japanese storytelling (not gonna spoil it, but you'll probably know it when you see it if you've watched just about any amount of Anime).

Another criticism I've heard is that the it's not as philosophical as, say, Westworld. I can't disagree strongly enough, as it's themes are grounded in pretty gritty questions about mortality and meaning, and its exploring them in the way that good scifi does; extrapolating the what-if to the n'th degree and seeing what questions emerge. Sure, its not Heidegger but its also an action drama so turning your nose up at it for this seems to be a bit off the mark, both in terms of missing the questions it does ask, and perhaps expecting the tedium of philosophic exposition that's the bane of many many boring sci fi attempts (Neal Stephenson, I'm looking at you).

I should get back to nature, too. You know, like going to a shop for groceries instead of the computer. Maybe a condo in the woods that doesn't even have a health club or restaurant attached. Buy a car with only two cup holders or something.

Changing The Hendrix into The Raven was inspired and the chap playing Poe gets all the love in the world.

The Envoy changes were the only things that didn't really sit right with me and that mostly due to the fact that A - as mentioned, other books are now going to get HUGE sections rewritten if they decide to continue and B - It's so unnecessary. Kovacs makes it quite clear he did bad shit for the Protectorate before joining with Quell, so there's literally no reason to change this except to make Quell's group more badass, which is really not needed.

I will say that perhaps one of the best reasons for the changes is so that blokes like me can actually see something new in the story. It's nice when the wife says 'who's he' and I can genuinely reply 'I don't fucking know.' The Bancroft Son thing at least put a different rail on the narrative.

And, let's just be brutally frank for a moment, Ortega is just super fucking hot. Like, Super.

Same. I've been an Edgar Allan Poe fan for a long time. Combining him with a cyberpunk world is perfect!

I'm only at epsiode 4 but the achievement here is QUALITY FUCKING CYBERPUNK. Cyberpunk as moving pictures has never been done this well before, unless you count Blade Runner or video games like Deus Ex. We now have an actual successful big-budget cyberpunk drama.

That's partially because Dichen herself is absurdly hot and disturbing.

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something. We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail

And, let's just be brutally frank for a moment, Ortega is just super fucking hot. Like, Super.

100 times this. Holy hell. Hollywood really needs to get on the ball poaching Mexican actress's at a much faster rate.

"My great-grandfather did not travel across four thousand miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see this nation overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That's the rumor."-Stephen Colbert

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something. We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail

Tuned in, immediately get to watch cringey Ubisoft talking head offering her deepest sympathies to the families impacted by the Orlando shooting while flanked by a man in a giraffe suit and some sort of "horrifically garish neon costumes through the ages" exhibit or something. We need to stop this fucking planet right now and sort some shit out. -Kail

Really liking this show. Only 3 episodes in and I did not read the books (or have not yet I should say), but it is working for me. The cast is great and the dialogue has been perfectly cliché in a good way.